Lord Buddha attained enlightenment in Biharnear ISM, the Indian School of Mines, in Dhanbad,eastern Jharkhand state, Damodar River valley,

“The Coal Capital of India.” A city at the heartof the coalfields of Jharia, its pulmonary veinscarry blood money to Tata Iron and Steel Company

Ltd. Its ground exhales the smoke of coal fires,burning in the viscera, perpetual dyspepsia inthe second most polluted place in India.

2

In West Virginia, the Sago Baptist Church was founded in 1856 by Lucy Henderson, Hester Summerville, and others. Seventy years later, historian E.R. Grose would write:

This church has wielded a large influence in the lives of the Sago people. It has never been large in numbers but has stood faithfully for the best things in life; and only eternity can tell the influence it has exerted.

That’s a long time to wait, congregate. Youngsters in the first Sunday school competed to memorize scripture. L.B. Moore once recited two chapters of Matthew, left no time for the other children. At age twenty, Moore entered the Union Army, fought with Company B of the Tenth West Virginia Volunteer Infantry for three years. Wounded on the last day of the Siege of Petersburg, he returned home on crutches, joined the Baptist ministry ten years later. Company B lost fourteen to injuries and disease in the war. Moore founded a temperance society, preached against hard cider. Others went out as ministers from Sago Baptist, which first held services in the old log schoolhouse, on the river bank, at the chestnut tree. Many hearts beat there, and in the 1873 white painted church-house that became Mr. Burner’s barn twenty years later.

made from sago, pith of cycas revoluta, pearls of flourleached of natural toxins. The recipe is simple:Soak the sago overnight, melt ghee, brown chiles

and cumin seeds and maybe potatoes too, add soaked sago,cook until crisp. Garnish with coconut and cilantro.Do not cover the pan or the sago conglomerates

into one lump. Sago thickens like tapioca and plots.Despite popular myths, white sago is no purerthan the light cream variety. Rutajit feels full.

4

Sago Baptist Church is the point where trapped miners’ families gathered on pins and needles to wait for their loved ones to surface. Neighbors brought glazed hams, potato salad, and homemade black walnut apple cake with vanilla icing. The children ate. Red Cross workers brought cots, blankets, and Tylenol. Pastors Day and Barker, joined by Pastor Murrell of The Way of Holiness Church of Buckhannon brought hymns and scriptures, read Romans 8:28:

And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.

Families watched the mine entrance across the street. President Bush offered his prayer: May God bless those who are trapped below the earth, and may God bless those who are concerned about those trapped below the earth. Bush, Murrell, and Day asked us all to pray, so prayers circulated like oxygenated blood down through the national arteries, branched into our capillaries, in search of miners’ cells.

5

Rutajit’s name means “Conqueror of Truth.” Hindus permitdebate on the existence of God. His parents congratulatetheir future mine safety expert. A “mining accident”

is any accident that happens in a mine. If five or morepeople die, the accident is called a “mining disaster.”Rutajit loves science and his girlfriend, not words. His heart

pounds, but he does not pray the first timehis class enters Bagdigi Mine. Twenty-nine men diedin a flood there in 2001, he learns. Inside the mine are signs

of concern: Coal dust hai kahtray ki naani, is mein chheetohardam paani. (Coal dust is the grandmother of all dangers,always sprinkle water on it.) Dust and ashes

are cognate. If footprints are visible on the mine floor,fine particles can explode, produce 200 mile per hour winds,dispersing additional dust from walls and overhead

beams. There can be secondary explosions, fires. Anythingthat can burn in bulk can explode when powdered and mixed with air. Coal, wood. Churches.

6

Westboro Baptist Church is down in the basement of Reverend Fred Phelps’ home in Topeka. Twenty members trekked to West Virginia for the miners’ memorial service. A holy pilgrimage. Their leaflets blasted Sago Baptist Church

for blasphemously misrepresenting the sovereign, predestined providences of The Almighty in the Sago Mine matter.

They proclaimed God’s absolute power to cause or prevent tragedy, abused the bereaved for the sin of failure to rejoice in God’s tragedies. Human compassion ignores the logic. At the core, faith is thick and dark as a coal mine, burns like fossil fuel. When the dead miners’ families misbelieved that all but one lived, they celebrated their miracle, danced and sang. Pastor Murrell said after that it was like they had experienced The Resurrection.

7

In the month after the Sago disaster, four more miners died in mining accidents in West Virginia.Like miscooked sago, the flow of names congeals.

Rutajit knows a story. On May 28, 1965, an explosionand fire in the Dhori Colliery in Dhanbad killedmore than 400 miners. Deep inside, heat blasted the mine

to darkness, blew off eyeglasses, burned off brows. The aircoagulated. The men died in denseness, unable to seetheir own hands. Thick in prayer.

Shelley Chernin is a 59-year-old freelance researcher, writer, and editor of legal reference books. She lives in Russell, Ohio (aka Novelty, proving that the US Postal Service once had a sense of irony). Her poems have appeared in Scrivener Creative Review, Rhapsoidia, What I Knew Before I Knew: Poems from the Pudding House Salon-Cleveland, the Heights Observer, the 2010 through 2012 Hessler Street Fair poetry anthologies and the Cuyahoga Burning edition of Big Bridge. She received the 2nd Place award in the 2011 Hessler Street Fair Poetry Contest and Honorable Mentions in the Akron Art Museum’s New Words Poetry Contest in 2009 and 2010. Her latest book, Oct Tongue -1, (2014, Crisis Chronicles Press) is a collaboration with Mary Weems, John Swain, Steven Smith, Lady, John Burroughs and Steve Brightman, Yes, of course, Shelley plays the ukulele. Who doesn’t?

Death and despair embed in the air
With questioning glares and embarrassing stares
Some empathy here, more sympathy there
The vision is dreadful and simply unfair
More hesitant glances and halted advances
The irony stance is now plainly aware
That follicles fail and comparisons pale for a male
The thought of him losing his hair

* * *

About Johny Godace:

I’ve always enjoyed poetry and I started on Shel Silverstein when I was young. Poe became a huge inspiration later on. Other inspirations include Alvin Schwartz (writer) and Stephen Gammell (illustrator) who worked on the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark book series. Various Hip-hop artists played an integral part as well as Kevin Smith: screenwriter, actor, film producer, and director, as well as a popular comic book writer, author, and podcaster. I always loved good wordplay and appreciated intricate ways words can make the reader feel and give them a visual for what the writer is communicating to the reader.

Jeffrey Bowen’s poetry has been publishedby ArtCrimes,Cicada, Cool Cleveland, Crisis Chronicles, CSU Poetry Center, Dimensions, Doan Brook Watershed, Excursions, Green Panda Press, Hessler Street Fair, Procrastination Press, Poet’s League of Greater Cleveland, The City, The Cleveland Reader, and Whiskey Island Magazine. He is one of six poets profiled in the 1995 documentary, “Off the Page”. Four of his poems are featured on Cleveland Tumbadors, an album of Traditional Afro Cuban Music and Latin Jazz on Fame City Records. Jeffrey is the resident poet & conga player with the band, Cats On Holiday, and his poetry appears on their CD, Holiday in a Box from COHTONE Records. In addition to his poetic work, Jeffrey’s writing has appeared in Call & Post, City News, Cool Cleveland, EcoWatch, Elephant Journal, Girl Scout News,GreenCityBlueLake, Live Cleveland, Neighborhood News, Nonprofit Notes,Sun News and various Habitat for Humanity publications.

Jennifer Hambrick ‘s first chapbook of poems, Unscathed, has been lauded for its “crystalline, poignant images” and for its “fresh palette of questions, longings and unadulterated class.” Jennifer’s poetry has also been published in Pudding Magazine, WestWard Quarterly, A Narrow Fellow, Common Threads, the 2013 Ohio Poetry Association anthology Everything Stops and Listens, the Columbus Creative Cooperative’s Ides of March anthology, and the Ohio Poetry Day Best of 2011 prizewinners’ collection. Jennifer won the Ohio Poetry Association’s 2013 Ides of March contest, was a prizewinner in The Poetry Forum’s 2011 William Redding Memorial Poetry Contest, and received multiple recognitions in the 2011 Ohio Poetry Day contests. She enjoys a lively schedule of featured poetry readings around Ohio. By day, Jennifer Hambrick is a classical musician and public radio broadcaster, producer, and blogger.

Ra Washington Is a writer living and working on Cleveland’s west side with his wife, historian Lyz Bly. He is the author of 24 books – most recently the novel, Run Along, The FIRE Says – and he operates the bookstore/zine cooperative, Guide To Kulchur, in the Historic Detroit Shoreway neighborhood. He also curates the electronic music label Cleveland Tapes. You can find him on twitter @clevelandtapes.

“Moloch, Moloch” (c) 2012 by RA Washington, used with permission. The poem originally appeared in his book Primer for the Vanguard Youth, published by Crisis Chronicles Press.

Her mouth too near the microphone She first intoned her title; Her voice a buzzing monotone She said, I think, our souls would moanWith howls like Allen Ginsberg’s own,And slurred and blurred her dreary drone, In tedious recital.

She gripped the podium on stage, Her poem never ending —And only her decrepit ageAssuaged the next three readers’ rageAs, turning yet another page,She spent our time as if her wage Depended on its spending.

As moderator, I did not Perceive a lot of choiceAs murmurs grew: somebody ought,No, had, to halt her verbal squatSo toad-like in our garden spot,And find a way to staunch this rot By stoppering her voice.

So arms out toward, as I’d been taught, The middle of the mass,I aimed, breathed out, and squeezed, and shotThe leather-lunged and doddering blotWho’d droned along as if she thoughtThat once she’d seized the mike she’d got Some sort of life-time pass.

The general approach of Law, And many of its minions,To shooting someone through the crawFor her inane blah blah blah blah,However last that last last straw,Is that it is a fatal flaw In not a few opinions.

The prosecutor even shed A manly tear to show itHad moved him greatly she was dead:“Her pure poetic spirit fledProsaic Death’s pedestrian tread … ““Wait, wait — “ the jury foreman said “You say she was a poet?”

The prosecutor said “Indeed! And she was published widely —I’ll use your question to proceedTo show you.” He began to read.At length, the foreman knelt to plead:“Stop reading! We have all agreed! We can’t abide this idly!

“You’ve put us through this punishment And made your case absurder;We find the shooter innocentOf any criminal intent —Indeed, we actively lamentYour sly attempt to represent This noble act as murder.

“We hold free speech must know its place If it is to continue:You must not underbid your ace,Nor doubt the Holy Spirit’s grace,Nor sing the tune if you’re a bass,For decency demands you face The moral law within you!

“But poets who have read too long Must all be superceded —We urge you when you’re in a throngWhile poets thus are in the wrong,To make your protest very strongAnd aim to end such ceaseless song With shot and shell as he did!”

The prosecutor gave a sigh And packed away his pleadings,Then gave me such a look goodbyeIt made me think he meant to tryTo mutely say, or just imply,That maybe I’d be wise if I No longer read at readings.

* * * * *

Not much is known about Marcus Bales, except he lives in Cleveland, Ohio, and his poems have not been published in The New Yorker or Poetry magazine.

“Government must defend itself; life and property must be protected, and law and order must be maintained; murder must be punished, and if the defendants are guilty of murder, either committed by their own hands or by some one else acting on their advice, then if they have had a fair trial, there should be in this case no executive interference”

Pretty much the words one would expect from a tycoon who spent $100,000 of his own money on the campaign that elected him Governor of Illinois; he would be another in the line of elected officials who had done and would do nothing for the remaining three inmates convicted in the Haymarket case (George Bernard Shaw on some of those officials: “If seven men must die for the Haymarket explosion, civilization can better afford to lose the seven members of the Illinois Supreme Court”)

But this official was John Peter Altgeld:

“no man has the right to allow his ambition to stand in the way of the performance of a simple act of justice” (something never even thought by Kennedy) and “If I decide they are innocent I will pardon them if I never hold office another day”

And so:

“The record of the trial shows that the jury in this case was not drawn in the manner juries usually are drawn” that bailiff Henry Ryce had been appointed as a special bailiff to summon prospective jurors, that Ryce had successfully impaneled “a prejudiced jury which he believed would hang the defendants”

and findings of fact:

“until the State proves from whose hand the bomb came, it is impossible to show any connection between the man who threw it and these defendants” and “It is further shown here that much of the evidence given at trial was a pure fabrication; that some of the prominent police officials in their zeal, not only terrorized ignorant men by throwing them into prison and threatening them with torture if they refused to swear to anything desired, but that they offered money and employment to those who would consent to do this”

And thus:

“I am convinced that it is clearly my duty to act in this case for the reasons already given, and I, therefore, grant an absolute pardon to Samuel Fieldin, Oscar Neebe, and Michael Schwab this 26th day of June,1893″

And then the attacks began, by those stern guardians of right and wrong, the press, all having little to do with the substance of the message:

“an alien himself” who “does not reason like an American, does not feel like one, &nb
sp; and consequently does not behave like one” who “has encouraged anarchy, rapine and the overthrow of civilizations”

And for those who think nastiness and name-calling are recent phenomena in politics, these statements from the re-election campaign in 1896, uttered by a future President (who will remain deservedly nameless in this poem), Altgeld was:

“one who would connive at wholesale murder” a man who “would substitute for the government of Washington and Lincoln a red welter of lawlessness and dishonesty as fantastic and vicious as the Paris Commune: (red-baiting never goes out of style, sadly)

And such attacks worked, as they usually do: Altgeld was defeated, his courage not rewarded in the short run, and in constant danger of being forgotten in the long run

Lacie Clark Semenovich reads poetry, including from her book Legacies (2012, Finishing Line Press), during the Deep Cleveland Poetry Hour at Mugshotz in North Royalton, Ohio, on 8 March 2013.

Born in the Appalachian foothills of southern Ohio, Lacie Clark Semenovich moved to northern Ohio in 1996 to attend Kent State University where she earned a B.A. in English and a Writing Certificate. She moved to the Cleveland area in 2001, with her husband where they live in a perpetual construction zone of do-it-yourself home renovations. In 2008, Clark earned an M.A. in English Literature from Cleveland State University. Her poetry can be found in Barrelhouse, Autumn Sky Poetry, Zygote in My Coffee, MOBIUS, Kansas City Voices, and other journals.

Back cover of Unruly by Steven B. Smithpublished 8/20/2011 by Crisis Chronicles Press(foto by Smith, text added by JC)

No TV for Meby Steven B. Smith, from Unruly

News depresses me
with its shallow anger and hate
but what gets me more
is doing our laundry
at the Soap Opera Laundromat
having to hear Drew Carey
call contestants down
to The Price is Right stage
where they bounce
and jiggle
and squeal
and wiggle and squirt
in greed of need
and want to flaunt
something for nothing
in quarter hour fame
before the shame
of being same
returns
all small and normal